Lessl, Thomas M. (Author)
Baylor University Press
Physical Details: xxxvi + 322 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English
Everything evolves, science tells us, including the public language used by scientists to sustain and perpetuate their work. Harkening back to the Protestant Reformation---a time when the promise of scientific inquiry was intimately connected with a deep faith in divine Providence---Thomas Lessl traces the evolving role and public identity of science in the West. As the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment, notions of Providence evolved into progress. History's divine plan could now be found in nature, and scientists became history's new prophets. With Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary science, progress and evolution collapsed together into what Lessl calls "evolutionism," and the grand scientific identity was used to advance science's power into the world. In this masterful treatment, Lessl analyzes the descent of these patterns of scientific advocacy from the world of Francis Bacon into the world of Thomas Huxley and his successors. In the end, Rhetorical Darwinism proposes that Darwin's power to fuel the establishment of science within the Western social milieu often turns from its scientific course.Everything evolves, science tells us, including the public language used by scientists to sustain and perpetuate their work. Harkening back to the Protestant Reformation---a time when the promise of scientific inquiry was intimately connected with a deep faith in divine Providence---Thomas Lessl traces the evolving role and public identity of science in the West. As the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment, notions of Providence evolved into progress. History's divine plan could now be found in nature, and scientists became history's new prophets. With Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary science, progress and evolution collapsed together into what Lessl calls "evolutionism," and the grand scientific identity was used to advance science's power into the world. In this masterful treatment, Lessl analyzes the descent of these patterns of scientific advocacy from the world of Francis Bacon into the world of Thomas Huxley and his successors. In the end, Rhetorical Darwinism proposes that Darwin's power to fuel the establishment of science within the Western social milieu often turns from its scientific course.
...MoreDescription On the development of the idea of progress out of the religious notion of Providence and its relationship to evolution and the promotion of science in the modern world.
Similar Citations
Article
Chris Manias;
(2017)
Progress in life's history: Linking Darwinism and palaeontology in Britain, 1860–1914
(/isis/citation/CBB426710736/)
Chapter
Ruse, Michael;
(2010)
Evolution and the Idea of Social Progress
(/isis/citation/CBB001020305/)
Chapter
Lefèvre, Wolfgang;
(2003)
Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress: Materialism and Views of Development in Nineteenth-Century Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB000430211/)
Book
Alexander, Denis R.;
Numbers, Ronald L.;
(2010)
Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins
(/isis/citation/CBB001020054/)
Article
Manias, Chris;
(2015)
Sinanthropus in Britain: Human Origins and International Science, 1920--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001551286/)
Book
Rhodri Leng;
Gareth Leng;
(2020)
The Matter of Facts: Skepticism, Persuasion, and Evidence in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB306641216/)
Book
White, Paul;
(2002)
Thomas Huxley: Making the “Man of Science”
(/isis/citation/CBB000201584/)
Thesis
Jeffrey Thomas Wright;
(2016)
Darwin, Huxley, and the Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB948034428/)
Article
Lightman, Bernard;
(2011)
Periodicals and Controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB001220691/)
Book
Peter J. Bowler;
(2021)
Progress Unchained: Ideas of Evolution, Human History and the Future
(/isis/citation/CBB574268768/)
Article
Michael B. Smith;
(2021)
“That future age of which we can only dream”: Exploring the origins of the climate crisis in the Story of Progress
(/isis/citation/CBB355466558/)
Book
Ryan E. Gregg;
(2018)
City Views in the Habsburg and Medici Courts: Depictions of Rhetoric and Rule in the Sixteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB933368714/)
Article
Ahmed Ragab;
(2017)
Making History: Identity, Progress and the Modern-Science Archive
(/isis/citation/CBB648153197/)
Article
Lyons, Sherrie Lynne;
(2010)
Evolution and Education: Lessons from Thomas Huxley
(/isis/citation/CBB001032816/)
Book
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2003)
Evolution: The History of an Idea
(/isis/citation/CBB000410944/)
Article
Novoa, Adriana;
(2009)
The Act or Process of Dying Out: The Importance of Darwinian Extinction in Argentine Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB000932754/)
Article
Díaz, Edna Suárez;
(2007)
The Rhetoric of Informational Molecules: Authority and Promises in the Early Study of Molecular Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB000850283/)
Article
Strick, James E.;
(2009)
Darwin and the Origin of Life: Public Versus Private Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000932664/)
Book
Lightman, Bernard;
(2009)
Evolutionary Naturalism in Victorian Britain: The “Darwinians” and Their Critics
(/isis/citation/CBB000951742/)
Book
Cosans, Christopher E.;
(2009)
Owen's Ape and Darwin's Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism
(/isis/citation/CBB000951052/)
Be the first to comment!